The Kwikset Kevo Bluetooth-enabled door lock is the kind of tech that reminds us that we're living in the future. With one of these installed in your home, you can get inside just by tapping a finger against the lock. Before you panic, this only works if your phone is in range and on the right side of door (i.e. the outside).

Themer Beta, a launcher replacement initiative by the team at MyColorScreen.com, has received a lot of attention in the last few weeks. And I mean a lot, as it currently has a waitlist of 280,000+ people strong. That's right, two hundred and eighty thousand.

The invites have so far been released in relatively small batches of a few thousand at a time, leaving the majority of those on the list waiting impatiently and scrambling to find a code or two to satisfy that Themer craving.

The slew of deals coming out today just isn't stopping. Besides Google's coordinated End of Summer Sale, BeyondPod, an extremely popular podcast manager, is offering its full version unlock key for $1.99, down from the normal $6.99. A handy price drop after Listen was abruptly pulled from the Play Store. The key works for both the regular and tablet-oriented versions. This app is one of the more powerful podcast managers and is able to run on a wide selection of devices, including many Google TV boxes.

Google Authenticator, an important security tool that enables 2-step verification for your Google account, has racked up over 250,000 downloads over its lifetime, which is no small feat for any app in the Play Store. However, a few days ago, that version (previously available here) all of a sudden became obsolete and was consequently silently deleted.

Its replacement, which can be found here, bears version 2 (2.15 to be exact) and offers the following changelog:

A new version of SwiftKey X has been released to private beta testers, and it brings quite a few improvements. Chief among them: the ability to learn from your blog via RSS - certainly a nifty feature. Other highlights include better error reporting, general performance improvements, and a number of bug fixes. The update also brings a new novelty feature in the form of the "My typing heatmap," which keeps track of keystrokes and displays a "heatmap" of the keyboard.

This contest is now over. We have selected the winners - see if you are one of them towards the bottom of the page.

One of my greatest annoyances with Android, as a developer and an employee having to connect to my company's VPN, is the complete lack of attention to usability of VPN-related activities. Not only is it impossible to pull out a widget to connect to a VPN server, but Google apparently thought it wasn't useful (and so insecure that it shouldn't even be an option) to add the ability to save the VPN password.

Ingenious apps come out very rarely, but when they do, I make sure to have them installed on all my Android phones and recommend them to everyone I know. Theft Aware is one such app, as you may have already found out if you've read my review. It hides itself in your phone so well, especially if it's rooted, that unless the thief installs a whole new ROM (a hard reset doesn't remove Theft Aware on rooted phones) or knows you are running Theft Aware for a fact, you will be able to track your device for as long as it has battery life.